How To

Storytelling has been a cherished art form for thousands of years. When done right, it can win an entire group over and have a girl hanging onto your every word. Here are some of the positive effects:

Make her smile or laugh so she feels comfortable around you.

Create attraction by showing her interesting qualities or values about yourself.

Connect with her on a personal level and cut through small talk.

Encourage her to open up to you.

A story is about the atmosphere you create. Really, you can talk about anything — your favorite professor, trying a new food, or a strange encounter with a taxi driver. It doesn’t have to be over the top or dishonest to make an impression.

Lead with a hook

You may have a cool story, but you need to segue into it gracefully. You should connect where you are, what you’re doing, or what she just said to the scene you’re about to set.

Simply ask a thought-provoking question, relate back to her, state an interesting fact, or recount something that just happened.

1. Understand what a gold digger is, and is not. There’s nothing wrong with a person being concerned about your financial stability. A long-term partnership means depending on each other through the ups and downs, and being financially reliable does help with that to a degree. The difference between a gold digger and someone who values your role as a provider is that the gold digger would deride and perhaps leave you if you lost your ability to provide for them financially. A good person can appreciate your financial resources, but a gold digger appreciates only that, and will not see the relationship as worthwhile if you’re not well off.

2.Gold diggers drop hints that they’re having trouble paying their bills (sometimes they might even ask you directly for a “loan” to tide them over).They know that you don’t want to see them get an eviction notice, or get their car repossessed, and you’re a good person who’s in a position to help. But there’s a difference between a gold digger and someone who’s just fallen on bad times. What you should be looking for is if, despite their situation, this person is making poor financial decisions. Do they buy a brand new car with luxury features when they’re struggling to pay rent? Do they buy $300 shoes or watches when their phone service is at risk of getting cut off? Do they go to expensive restaurants when their credit cards are maxed out, because they “work hard” and they “earned it”? Many gold diggers know better than to ask you to fund their more luxurious tastes, at least in the beginning; they’ll tap into your desire to help them afford the things they need (food, shelter, transportation) so that they can spend their own money on the things they want.

Many people have told me how hard it is to make and maintain friendships in their adult lives. Their best buddies move away, everyone has full-time jobs, and couples spend more time with each other and less time out socializing. Moments with with friends becomes more rare and precious.

I know that once I was out of school, I felt lost. It had been so much easier to connect with people when I saw them everyday at classes. Out in the real world, I had no clue how to make friends with strangers.

But after years of challenging my social comfort zone, I’m happy to say I’ve learned how to build a great social circle. And in fact, the connections I’ve made in the last years are arguably the most meaningful.

It’s about learning to read cues. Most girls (or people in general) don’t like to straight-up tell you “Go away,” but they’ll send a number of signals to indicate that they’re uncomfortable or don’t want to talk to you.

Not responding to messages

Responding with one word

Answering questions but not asking you any (they’re trying to be polite, but not trying to keep the conversation going)

Never initiating contact with you

Keeping conversation at a superficial level, changing the subject when you try to go deeper

Trying to escape the conversation (looking around frequently, looking at phone, talking to other people)

As for things you can do when talking to people:

A comment on a girl’s physical appearance, especially if you don’t know her, and particularly through the internet, is not the best way to start a conversation. What do you say to “You have a gorgeous smile”? “Um, thanks.” The end. It can go no further.

Try bringing up a mutual interest, mutual experience, etc. and work from there. Show interest in her as a human first, and then bring up her gorgeous smile- not only does it spark more conversational possibilities, it separates you from the creeps who are only interested in banging a hottie and don’t care about the person that hottie might be.

With few exceptions, any line used to seduce women in porrn will NOT work in real life.

Another killer is a simple, “Hey,” followed by silence. If you want to start the conversation, YOU come up with something to talk about. This goes with just about anyone. We all have that friend who gets bored, pops on chat and says “hey,” hoping we have some way to entertain them.

Avoid overt sexual comments to anyone you don’t know well, and most girls you do know well. Rule of thumb: Unless she has touched you of her own volition (this includes reciprocating physical contact you have initiated), you probably shouldn’t be bringing up any sort of sex talk.

In general, avoid opening up too much personal information or asking too much personal information with people you don’t know well. Hate to say it, but people just don’t want to hear it most of the time, and it makes them uncomfortable.

Know who is and is not your close friend. Someone you’ve met once? Not a close friend. Someone you’ve chatted with occasionally on Facebook? Not a close friend. These people can become close friends, but be on the lookout for signals of interest before getting too excited.

On a related note, don’t assume that one really good conversation has solidified your connection. It’s easy to get overeager and pull a Tommy Boy. Relationships take time to develop closeness, so even if you feel a connection right away, resist the urge to jump to BFF too soon. (Unless it’s CLEARLY mutual, then congratulations! You got lucky.)

Respect boundaries. If someone seems uninterested in talking to you, DO NOT PUSH IT.

If someone doesn’t want to talk to you, let it go. Don’t try to make yourself feel better by insulting them, or try to make them feel guilty by sending them a long-winded sob story. There are 7 billion people on this planet, and odds are a few of them will like you, so don’t worry too much about the others.

Finally, creepiness is subjective and it’s a term people throw about carelessly these days. There are people who will call you a creep for arbitrary reasons, including some girls who will throw that label onto any guy they don’t want to talk to. Try to keep a realistic view of yourself, get feedback from people you can trust to be honest about your behavior, and don’t give up. Social ineptitude isn’t congenital; you can do it.

So, I know entirely too much about this. Come, and bask in the expertise garnered by my misplaced pastimes.

There are two set ups to claw machines. Like most people are pointing out, most of the new ones (which will from here on out be referred to as sucky machines) cycle through the tension. The cycles in sucky machines can run through as few as 3 (rare) average at 5-7 and can run as many as 10. The sucky machines can be set but usually aren’t, while the older ones, or awesome machines, have to be set, and then you’re at the mercy of the owner. The benefit of the awesome machine is that even if it sucks you can find out in a try or two whether or not it’s worth it. And the ones that are truly awesome are worth the hunt. I’ll eat at a restaurant I hate for a chance to play "The One." The one that always closes, every time. The one that always has something you actually want in it because they put real plush in there. The one that cares about how skilled you are, and not what fucking cycle it is. For those of you willing to hunt out "The One," you’ll find the awesome older machines in privately owned places like non-chain arcades, pizza parlours, diner foyers, old timey corner stores and -most commonly- bowling alleys.

Being able to tell which machines are going to play fair is unfortunately mostly trial and error and good memory. If you have the time and/or patience you can wait around and watch others play to conserve your own quarters. Here’s my personal technique for deciding on a machine, and no guarantees it’s any good, but here goes. Don’t sit and plug a bunch of quarters in all at once just to see what the cycle is going to be. It’s better to hit up each machine just once each trip for a few trips to let others advance the cycles and judge the following traits of each machine: